In this four-part video interview, Julie Gibbons from Tractor Girl Visual Business and Lynette Delane of Kits and Bits discuss Branding Basics for Beginners.

Topics included in part 4: Great visuals, offering value and word marks vs logos.

My Guest

Julie Gibbons started tractorgirl because she wanted to share the good stuff; to inspire creativity, inspire people to think more, to make their online presence a more mindful, beautiful thing. She wanted to show that with the right tools, knowledge and practice, everyone is capable of good design, and of presenting what they have to offer to the world in the most beautiful way possible.

And the thing is, every time you put your branding up there too, offer great value.
Because, that’s the other thing, too, especially in social media. If I’m putting up posts all of the time, and all I’m doing is spruking what I’m doing, and people get sick of that.

But if I’m consistently putting up branded graphics, that are offering great advice. Every time I see something from Lynette, I go, “what’s Lynette got?”

Cause I know she knows so much about all this techy Word stuff, and she’s got great, great tips on how to deal with it all. I always stop and read Lynette’s things.

Lynette:

And you do, you know there’s people in our groups, whether it’s larger brands, someone like Simon Sinek.

If you saw that, you’d go, “I’ll stop and read that”, you know?

With Gary Vaynerchuck, people just stop and read his stuff, just because they see his face.

They don’t even have to read it, but his face is all over social media, people know exactly who he is and what he does.

Julie:

Indeed, yeah, all that stuff

Lynette:

All that stuff.

And then, finally, we were going to talk about the whole ‘word mark’ versus logo thing, because that’s what actually prompted this discussion in the first place.

So, explain what the difference between what a word mark and a logo is.

Julie:

Okay, so a word mark really is just your business name in a particular font and or color.

And that’s simple as, and Tractor Girl has a word mark, for the logo, and that’s all I’ve got, and that’s all I’ve ever had, and it works just fine.

And as you were talking about before, the number of huge businesses
that just have a word mark, no iconography, no nothing, just a word mark, huge businesses,

Just their word, and you think like, these massive companies, surely they can afford a designer if they need to. It’s not like they don’t have a budget.

Seriously, it works perfectly fine. Don’t feel like you have to spend oodles of money on a fancy logo, because, you have to get all of the rest of your stuff about your logo right before you get on to the logo.

Your logo has to project something about what your business is about, just like everything else in your branding.

And if it’s not doing that, if it’s not, for me, a logo, something with an icon in it, it’s the cherry on top of the ice cream.

Or even, you know, it’s the last thing you need to think about with your branding. You’ve got to get all of the fundamentals right first.

You’ve got to figure out who your audience is, and what you want to project, and all of that kind of stuff first.

Then think about your logo.

Lynette:

That sounds like a great plan, and something that I wish I’d done more of from the beginning.

We both really love brands and love seeing small businesses use their brand effectively and both try to help them save time and money in the initial set up when they’re trying to figure out what their brand is.

Julie:

Yeah, you don’t have to spend oodles, please don’t spend oodles of money, on branding when you’re starting out.

Just don’t spend huge amounts of money on your branding

when you’re starting out, because if you’re not happy with your branding, and you have a website that you’re not proud of it’s going to hold you back in business.

Lynette:

Yes, that’s right. That’s the previous discussion.

Julie:

Well here you go, let’s talk about it again.

Lynette:

I keep hiding behind my logo, but I also think, I don’t like my current website, so I don’t share much from it.

Julie:

That’s holding you back in your business, because you don’t like it.

Lynette:

I’m in the process of developing a new website and that really, I know that I’m going to be proud of it.

I’m going to be happy to share it, I’m going to be happy for other people to share it.

It does, if you’ve got a brand that you don’t like, that you’ve spent lots of money on, and you think that you should actually do something.

Julie:

You feel compelled to use it, and there’s that horrible feeling of being torn.

I don’t like it, but I have to share it because I want to get my value of money out of it.

Lynette:

And that’ll be the wrong attitude behind it. That’s definitely not what we want people to do.

Find a brand or a word mark, or a simple color palette and a font to begin with.

Julie:

And start simple. Please start simple.

Lynette:

That’s important.
Find out actually who you want to be. Who you want to help. Get all that, get your words, your visuals, all of those.Get them in line first and then spend some money getting a logo done.

Julie:

Yeah

Lynette:

Thanks Julie

Julie:

No worries, and I’ll talk to you again soon because we’ve got lots of juicy things to talk about.

Lynette:

Sure do

End of Transcription N.B. This transcription has been edited for better readability, however, the general structure is the same as the video.

If at any point, it sounds like Julie and I have no idea what we’re talking about, it’s because we had already had this whole conversation before without me pressing the record button.

Bits and Bobs an interview series for new business owners looking to avoid the pitfalls that we who have gone before have either already fallen into it and climbed out of or managed to skip over all together.Subscribe to watch other episodes where I along with other business owners dive into some less talked about and sometimes tough subjects highlighting some of those – “I wish I had known” topics so that you can get your business going faster and easier.

Lynette embodies an intrinsic ability to save business owners money by delivering back the all-elusive “spare” time so they can use it to do what they love. She puts these principles into practice in her own business – Kits and Bits. Lynette is an avid genealogist and tango dancer.

In this 3 part video interview, Nicolette Smith of The End of Life Care and Lynette Delane of Kits and Bits discuss how technology has changed how we deal with death.
In part 1 we discuss how;
1. It’s now easier than ever to seek support with online groups for carers or groups for people with specific diagnosis.
2. An End of Life Doula provides support and service that complement other services like palliative care.
3. It’s now easier to leave a legacy behind with accessibility of recording a video on your phone, or skype.